Professional Development

Creative Education…

Why is it transforming childrens’ lives?

While at a conference on student-directed learning in New York last year, I heard American educators refer to creative education as a childrens’ rights issue. In Australia, we haven’t really spoken of such a thing.

We do know, however, creative education is indeed transformative. The fundamental purpose of creativity is to transform… to generate new life and new growth. Creativity changes things.

Experts across the fields of education, industry, environment, economy, and society are calling loudly for more creativity. Why are they doing that? Because some things need to transform… to change. Our children are being left with major problems academia is not able to solve on its own. And that’s okay… we’re getting wiser from it. We understand creativity enables problem solving, collaboration, and well-being, and it is these attributes education, industry, environment, economy and society are calling for.

Many children are yearning to be a part of this problem-solving, collaborative, well-being picture. They are tenacious, idealistic, frustrated, hands-on… some are even in lots of trouble! They have defining characteristics… we even know how their teachers respond to them. In terms of the numbers of children, consider that 25% of Australian Society has a preference for creativity (SGS, 2013). What is the number of children in Australia equivalent to 25%? It’s a lot! (Did you know 25% of students who begin secondary school don’t complete it?)

“Don’t ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, but what problems do they want to solve. This changes the conversation from ‘who do I want to work for’, to ‘what do I need to learn to be able to do that’” (Casap, 2015).

“Tomorrow’s citizens must be effective problem-solvers. That is precisely what intelligence is all about” (Isaksen and Parnes, 2013).

Our seminar and workshop will answer these, and many other questions:

what is creative education?

how do creative education and academic education differ?

why the need for creative education?… a literature review

what is creativity?… it’s purpose, functions and gifts

what are the principles and practices of creative education?

who is offering creative education?

what are the learning outcomes of creative education?

how is creative education integrated with academic education?

Creative Education is very different to academic education.

In essence, children learn through the creative process rather than the academic process.

Creative education is more:

inquiry-based rather than curriculum-delivered

democratic rather than authoritarian

student-directed rather than teacher-directed

self-evaluated rather than standardised

facilitated rather than taught

multi-aged rather than peer-aged

and integrates:

deep ecology, expressionist arts, and progressive technology, and

creativity as a subject.

In our experience, educators find creative education principles and practices challenging to adopt, or feel they feel aligned with it.

Learning about this new pedagogy sweeping the world will answer the questions you have about it, including its place in your own teaching, if any. It’s important to stay one step ahead.

Details:

Suitable for primary, secondary and early childhood educators, coordinators and principals, and parents.

Participants receive a certificate of completion for 5 hours of professional development.

Registered teachers can reference the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers including:

1.1 Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of learners